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Betty Aldworth, a director of the Yes on 64 campaign, is joined by co-directors Brian Vicente, left, and Mason Tvert on Wednesday in Civic Center after the passage of Amendment 64. (Ed Andrieski, The Associated Press)

In 2006, as he campaigned for a measure to legalize marijuana in Colorado, Mason Tvert once staged a news conference outside the Drug Enforcement Administration's office in suburban Denver, flanked by several cases of beer and a wanted poster with John Hickenlooper's face on it.

He crashed a law-enforcement conference — and got booed by the cops. He challenged elected officials to a "drug duel." He put up a billboard with a bikini-clad woman on it and the message, "Marijuana: No hangovers. No violence. No carbs!"

And, one time, when a reporter asked him why he believed a DEA marijuana bust was timed for political effect, Tvert responded with characteristic orneriness: "They're scared as ...."

It's safe to say that, for Tvert and other marijuana activists, the campaign for Amendment 64 — which culminated Tuesday night in a first-in-the-nation win for marijuana legalization — was less mischievous.

Today, Tvert wears a suit and a dress shirt. He speaks in pithy sound bites about budgets and public safety. The publicity stunts have been replaced by the hallmarks of a serious political machine: phone banking, neighborhood canvassing, demographic-targeted messaging and polished advertising.

In the six years between when Colorado voters rejected marijuana legalization by 18 percentage points and when they approved it by 10 points, this much has become clear: The politics of marijuana advocacy have sobered up.

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"In 2006, we ran an initiative with the desire to win and the expectation of losing," Tvert said. "This time around, we had the desire to win but also a clear path to winning."

The success of Amendment 64, which legalizes limited marijuana possession and commercial sales, took even supporters by surprise.

"I was always in this for the fight," said Brian Vicente, another of Amendment 64's chief proponents, "not the win."

But that is not to say the victory was unplanned. Rather, it was the result of a meticulous, inch-by-inch political strategy that began in 2000 with the passage of a medical-marijuana initiative.

Tvert's involvement began in 2004, the year before voters in Denver legalized marijuana possession in a largely symbolic vote. The next year, voters rejected statewide legalization in a campaign that Tvert said was meant more to raise the issue's profile than to succeed.

In 2007, Denver voted again in favor of marijuana. Even a 2010 legalization initiative in Breckenridge that police said would do little to change their enforcement practices was part of the plan, said Rob Kampia, the director of the Marijuana Policy Project, which works for marijuana legalization across the country.

"It got a huge story in The New York Times, the Breckenridge thing," he said last week. "That's what made it relevant — people hearing that it happened."

Along the way, Tvert and fellow activists worked systematically to address weak spots in their support.

When polling showed women repeatedly had lower levels of support for marijuana legalization than men, activists formed the Women's Marijuana Movement. They pitched legalization to mothers as being about overly harsh drug laws: Do you want your child going to jail for a little pot?

A woman, Betty Aldworth, was hired to be the spokeswoman for the Amendment 64 campaign. To address concerns about how to reach Latino voters, the campaign tapped a Latino activist who did the campaign's interviews with Spanish-speaking television and radio stations.

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